NATURE 
summers than in wet years. The present is a most unusually 
dry season, and there is much more water in the creek than there 
was last year. The Sturt is called ‘a river,’ but, like most 
Australian rivers, it is at times only a series of water holes ; the 
water really running under the bed of the river. One can walk 
across the bed of the river, dryshod, except where the deep 
holes are. We cannot account for there being a greater body 
of water, that is, that the springs are stronger during drought 
than at other times. There are bad accounts from the northern 
areas, Tvereis no water. The crops, about six inches high, 
yielding four bushels to the acre. Water is obliged to be carted 
by rail to some districts, and at the mines on the Peninsula, 
they are obliged to set the stills to work. In the far north, the 
smew settlers are in fearful straits for want of water, even for 
drinking. The weather has been more tolerable lately; but hot in 
the sun, very cold wind in the evening, when a fireisagreeable.” 
Variable Cygni (Birmingham) 1881 
UNDER the above heading, in the Astr. Nachrichten, No. 
2421 (March 7), Dr. Schmidt, of Athens, gives the results of 
his observations of this star, which became invisible to him on 
Noyenber 24, and remained so up to his last search for it on 
December 22. It must have been from rather superior tele- 
scopic power—scarcely from a better a/mosphere—that I was 
able not alone to see it on December 21, but to recognise its 
deep crimson colour when no more than 12 mag., and probably 
less. I used a power of 53 on a 43 inch object-glass, 
Millbrook, Tuam, March 11 J. BIRMINGHAM 
A Strange Phenomenon 
Tue letter under the above heading in NATuRE, vol. xxv. p. 
410, does not describe a phenomenon altogether unique. A 
good many years ago a clergyman, well known to me, was 
passing over a low hill in this parish ; while doing so, he en- 
countered a sharp shower of hail, and on approaching the hizhest 
poiut of the ground, he was astonished to fiud an electrical dis- 
play-similar to that described by Mr. Moir, an elevated walking- 
stick behaving like a pointed rod on the prime conductor of an 
electrical machine. 1 understood that when the clergyman left 
the summit of the rising ground, the phenomenon disappeared, 
and that on at once retracing his steps it was again visible. Mr. 
Moir does not state his position with regard to the contour of the 
ground, but I strongly suspect that he occupied a position similar 
to that described above, and that he witnessed a natural display 
of the common class experiment of presenting a pointed metallic 
rod to the charged conductor of an electric machine. 
Fyvie, March 13 
STENO?} 
‘ta the galaxy of genius that glowed in the still dark 
, sky of the seventeenth century some spots shone forth 
more bright than others, and the keener vision and 
greater knowledge of later times has detected there stars 
of surpassing brilliancy. It was a period of great intel- 
lectual activity, and there was much independence of 
thought and freedom of research. In natural science 
this was quickly felt, and in Italy—elastic Italy !—that 
first rebounds to every movement, the results were soon 
made visible. It is not always in the heaving mass itself 
we first detect it; a foreign body resting on the surface 
sometimes more clearly indicates the motion. So in the 
country of Frascatoro, Scilla, Cardano, Cesalpino, Im- 
perati, Aldrovandi, it was a Dane who first put geological 
Science into shape. 
® Phil. Trans., vol. ii. p. 225. : 
Fabroni.—* Vie ltalorum,” vol iii. p. 7. 5 
Manni.—* Visa del Litteratissimo Mgr. Stenone,” Florentix, 1775. 
Pilla.—. dissertatione N Stenonis, ‘*de solido intra solidum naturaliter 
contento excerpta in quibus doctrinas gevlogicas que hodie sunt in honore 
facile est reperire,”’ Florentiz, 1842. 
A.G. S.—** Biographie Universelle,’’ Paris, 1825. 
Lyell. —** Principles of Geology,”’ vol. 1., 1830. 
Ramsay.—'* Passages in the History of Geology.’’ Inaugural Lecture, 
Univ. Cull Lond., 1848, p. so : ae. ‘ 
Cafellini.—* Di Nicola Stenone e dei suoi studii geologici in Italia,” 
Inaugural Lecture, University of Bologna, 1869. : 
Huxley.—Discourse at York meeting, Brit. Assoc., 1881, revised by the 
Author (Nature, vol. xxiv. p. 452). 
p 
Steno, and a curious history his. Born at Copenhagen in — 
1638, the son of a goldsmith in the service of Christian 
IV., he was brought up in the strictest principles of the 
Lutheran faith. Instead of following the calling of his 
fai her, he was educated for the medical profession, studied — 
under Thos. Bartholin, and attended the lectures of 
Borrichius and of Simon Paul. 
brought him into notice was human and comparative 
anatomy. Soon after he had obtained the degree of 
doctor at Copenhagen, he went to Leyden, attracted by 
the fame of Francis Sylvius, Van Horn, and others. 
Here he made the acquaintance of Gerard Blasius, to 
whom without any distrust or reserve he showed his 
recent discoveries of the parotid gland, and associated 
ducts, one of whichis named after him Ductus Stenonianus; 
but Blasius seems to have dealt unjustly by him in this 
matter, and to have put forward as his own the discoveries 
communicated to him by Steno. It was soon, however, 
appar nt that Blasius did not know enough about it to 
avail himself of the information he had thus gained and 
unfairly tried to make use of. Steno worked on, tracing 
by observation and experiment the relations between the 
salivary and mucous secretions and the blood. 
He next turned his attention to the organs of vision 
and of smell, and in his comparison of the human body 
with that of the lower animals he may be considered one 
of the founders of the science of comparative anatomy. 
About the year 1657 he published the results of his ex- 
periments on the eye of a calf, but he assumed too hastily 
an exact correspondence between that and the eye of 
other animals, especially man. In his work on the heart, 
too, he did not himself arrive at satisfactory results, but 
he did much to set others on the right line of inquiry, and 
we do not know how much Lower and other Jater writers 
were indebted to the earlier investigations of Steno on 
this subject. It will be seen that his chief work was that 
on the glands and various secretions, but it also was 
incomplete, and it remained for Richard Hall (Phi/. 
Trans. vi. p. 3) to make out the true relations of the sub- 
maxillary glands. 
In 1664 he published some embryological researches in 
a letter “On the manner in which the chick is nourished 
in the egg,” which, with a letter “ On the anatomy of the 
ray,” is appended to his essay entitled “ Observationum 
Anatomicarum de Musculis et Glandulis Specimen” 
(Copenhagen, 1664, 4to). On embryology he seems to 
have adopted the views of Marcello Malpighi. 
While engaged in these various studies at Amsterdam 
he heard of the death of his mother, and returned to 
Copenhagen. After a short stay there he went for a tour 
through Italy and France, and in 1664 arrived at Paris 
with a view of carrying on his anatomical researches, now 
especially devoting himself to the investigation of the 
brain. In Paris he became intimate with Thevenot,.and 
here also he made the acquaintance of Bossuet. The 
eloquence and earnestness of that remarkable prelate had 
such an effect upon Steno, that in 1667 he went over to 
the Catholics, which perhaps helped somewhat to secure 
for him the warm reception accorded to him by the 
Grand-Duke Ferdinand II. and his brother Leopold. 
He explains the reasons which had induced him to take 
this step, in a letter published by Fabroni (“ Lettere 
inedite di uomini illustri,” vol. ii.). Steno, after leaving 
Paris and making a tour through the chief towns of Italy, 
settled at Florence in 1666, where he met Carlo Dati, 
Francesco Redi, Vincenzo Viviani, and Lorenzo Maga- 
lotti. They, in spite of the jealous opposition of Jean 
Alphonse Borelli, who had had a controversy with Steno 
respecting the action of the muscles, all agreed in doing 
him honour, and invited him to become a member of the 
Academia del Cimento. He was appointed Physician to 
the Grand-Duke Ferdinand II. de’ Medici, and under his 
protection and patronage had great opportunities of pro- 
[Bloch 2} 2882 J 
But a very remarkable man was this Dane, Nicholas 
Hence the work thatfirst 
ac 
ee Ss ee 
